Credits

I’m not going to do a list of Ty’s credits when there are a number of places online that keep a thorough list…trying to get Ty to remember all the work he’s done always reminds me of a story of the actor Richard Burton*: a reporter once showed him a list of movies Burton had been in hoping to trigger some interesting anecdotes. Turns out that Burton had no memory of half of them and kept asking the reporter why he thought he had been in them. Okay, that was because Burton was a roaring drunk, and Ty doesn’t touch a drop of the stuff…but Ty’s memory is about as bad.

At almost every convention, there is a moment where someone brings Ty a book to sign and Ty explains politely that he is willing to sign it but that he didn’t do anything in it–this leads to the next moment where the fan just as politely opens to the page with Ty’s work. This isn’t alcohol or drugs–it’s what happens when you’ve been working solidly for so long, and are attracted to such disparate projects, and able to work in different fields with different skills. On Batman Adventures alone, Ty was a cover artist, penciller and writer at different times. He’s also worked as an inker, colourist and editor. Outside of comics, he’s been a musician (played keyboard on a number 1 country hit in Sweden!), actor, stand-up comedian, teacher and there was that very brief stint as a security guard while in college. Oh, and he was a carny at the CNE in Toronto while in high school.

(*Any actor with an extensive credit list will have the same problem. Trekkies and Trekkers always expect Joan Collins to have pithy things to say about her famous episode…but she has made it clear with things she says in interviews that she doesn’t remember the plot at all.)

Ty Templeton as a Comic Book Inker (www.comics.org) Wow, this is completely strange…I added this link earlier this morning when I wrote this entry, and when I clicked on it and discovered that the link wasn’t working, I went back to the Grand Comics Database Project and did a new search on “Ty Templeton/Inker”–and the search returned zero results! Surprise to me–and a surprise to Ty whose first award nomination was for inking. Anyway, I’m going to leave these links here and will fix them when they’re willing to work again….

There’s no listing obviously for things like Character Designs, Bibles, or the various random designs artists do for the licensing divisions of the various companies…Ty once did a collection of Batgirl drawings for DC Comics, in the Batman Adventures style. The hope was that companies would want to do Batgirl merchandise for girls. We never did see any of the designs in use. I’ve never understood why there are tons of clothing products for boys but not so much for the girls. Except Superman/Supergirl: last year there was a line of tshirts available with the Super logo in pink. Why is there never a Batgirl equivalent? I can see not having little girls dress up as Poison Ivy but Batgirl is cool.

I’ll have to take a picture of Ty’s Wolverine drawing which was used for the back of Xmen jackets in the early 90s. Ty’s had yellow sleeves, but the only other one we’ve ever seen had pale blue sleeves and was on an actress who did voices on the 90s Xmen cartoon series which was done in Toronto. Ty also did covers for the original series of video releases of the cartoon. Images for those can be found online.

And Ty did a series of Batman Adventures designs that were used on Happy Meal boxes for McDonalds. Unfortunately for him, that was when Canadian McDonalds were, for a brief time, not using the boxes so we’ve never seen them.

Wow, and after a quick cruise online, I realise I completely forgot about Ty’s designs for DC Licensing…he did a Harley Quinn snowglobe (I get to take credit for the fact that the “snow” is playing cards–that was my idea), and Supergirl and Batgirl statuettes.

Ty Templeton on IMDB (this is not a full list–that would be available on IMDB Pro, possibly. This listing does not include his three episodes of The Campbells from which, thank you CRTC for your Canadian content laws which require Canadian tv channels to have a certain percentage of their broadcasts to be Canadian, Ty gets a $35 royalty cheque every year. It also doesn’t include appearances on local Canadian tv…such as a fan panel on Space discussing Star Trek when the new movie came out.)

Ty Templeton as Theatre Actor–we don’t have a Canadian equivalent to the Internet Theatre Database, or if we do, Ty’s theatre credits are a few years back. You can ask Ty next time you see him at a convention–and he can regale you with stories of working with Gary Burghoff.